The Ex: Critic Reviews

What if Zach Braff acted in one more quarter-life-crisis movie, and instead of Sundance it went straight to video? If only that's what had happened to The Ex.

The best jokes in The Ex a scattershot screwball satire of job insecurity, upward mobility, political correctness and yuppie marital tensions, have claws that leave scratches.

It's a pretty twisted concept, bordering on offensive. But mostly it's just not funny.

A stunningly insipid romance, marks an all-time low for actor Zach Braff -- his Gigli, if you will.

The next time Grodin attempts a comeback, it would be so great if he avoids movies where he might be upstaged by a sandwich stunt.

Though there are giggles here and there, the film is inexcusably unfunny.

Nothing is more of a downer than a movie that trots out a great cast and stumbles; that tries to be cutesy and fails.

So much of comedy is in the timing, though, and The Ex doesn't quite know when to quit. Or at least move on.

Braff and Bateman engage in a beautiful comedic, verbal ballet that made me laugh much more than I would have thought I would, given what I knew about the story before watching the film. Both actors display on-target timing.

Jesse Peretz directs, and note how he treats the script (by David Guion and Michael Handelman) in its broadest slapstick elements. Not too well, that's how.

Even likable star Zach Braff can't salvage this clunker.

After The Last Kiss and Garden State, not to mention Scrubs (second only to Law and Order when it comes to TV ubiquity), Braff's shtick, his bug-eyed, hangdog, goofy-grin thing, is getting tired.

It's conventional, and given the talent involved it could be better. But it isn't half bad, which makes it twice as good as some recent comedy smashes.

If you're looking for Braff's most average movie to date, The Ex marks the spot.

A half-baked comedy torn between sincere emotion and over-the-top outrageousness.

Like many woeful major studio releases that run under 90 minutes, The Ex seems arbitrarily edited to squeeze in extra screenings before it's killed by word-of-mouth.

Braff and Bateman make this patchwork just funny enough to be worth our trouble.

Delayed, re-titled and presumably at least partially re-shot, Jesse Peretz's troubled office-bound romantic comedy The Ex is as half-baked as you'd expect it to be, but the better half -- the office half -- really does cook.

The Ex is extremely, exceptionally, extraordinarily forgettable, just like that stuff on the small screen.

There's a prescription for making an effective dark comedy: the film must generate equal parts discomfort and laughter. The Ex offers plenty of the former but precious little of the latter.

Jason Bateman's a blast, but this slack comedy's a bust.

It simultaneously feels truncated and interminable, and it grossly wastes the comic talents of Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Donal Logue and Charles Grodin, making his first movie in 13 years.

A completely forgettable comedy starring Zach Braff and Amanda Peet, The Ex takes a mix of tired scenarios and combines them in a way that makes the nearly 90 minutes feel much longer.